Delay Kittens

As a foster, unless I’m heading out of town, I rarely want a break. When I dropped my first litter off at Petsmart, I drove straight to pick up another. Sometimes I even take in a second litter while I still have one..  But the Toolbox was different. They had been such a sick group of kittens, and while I always clean thoroughly between litters, this time I needed to be extra vigilant—baseboards, ceiling fans, every crevice. There was a group of three kittens nursing on a feral mom that would be ready for intake just six days after the Toolbox went to adoption. The timing felt perfect: enough time to deep clean and catch up on work.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. My custom kennel setup works great, but I had been using a poorly cut piece of vinyl flooring underneath it to protect the real floor. Litter and debris constantly slipped into the narrow gaps, and I was always peeling it back to clean underneath. On top of that, the Toolbox kittens loved to play in their water dish, which meant water was constantly seeping under the mat and starting to damage the floor below.

So as I prepared for the deep clean, I decided to go a step further. I built a false floor using extra flooring panels and sealed the kennel directly to it with caulk, creating a much tighter barrier and finally protecting the real floor underneath. It turned into a much bigger project than expected—but in the end, it worked.  We moved everything away from the wall, deep cleaned and repaired what we could- built the new "floor", then carefully mvoed the very large custom kitten kennel on top of it, sealing all entries with caulk. 

One of my mentors had offered to come help with the deep clean, since my knee still isn’t reliable for long stretches. But we had to abandon the project for a trip to the emergency vet. Roxas’ cancer treatment had stopped working, and things declined so quickly that we were forced to make a decision far sooner than expected. The vet wasn’t even sure he would survive the diagnostics. In the end, we chose to let him go peacefully in our arms, rather than put him through more fear and discomfort.

By the time we got home, help was no longer available. Over the next several days, I cleaned and reorganized in spurts—doing what I could, when I could—determined to be ready for Friday’s scheduled intake.

Nothing motivates me like kittens, and by Thursday, I was ready.

Then Friday came… and so did the message: the calico was refusing to wean.  More waiting.

Saturday morning, the trapper apparently jump-started her with some wet food—activating the universal nom nom nom response—and intake was back on for that evening. The time was a vague “6–7ish,” so my husband and I headed that way for dinner to be ready.

We finished eating. Still nothing. We ran a few errands. Still nothing. Eventually, we gave up and headed home—because of course the trapper was still out trapping. (Why won’t ferals respect a schedule?)

Finally, everything lined up, and I picked up three very scared kittens Sunday morning.

They hissed. They hid. And for several days, they stayed tucked in or near their litter box, trying to make sense of their new world.  Lucky for me and my hands, they all defaulted to the "freeze" response... going stiff when picked up instead of having any sense of fight.

At first, they were too scared to eat—running from both me and their food for the first few hours. The first one to let temptation overpower fear? The calico.

While her siblings dropped weight dramatically, she ate heartily and slowly began to warm up to me. The orange had moments of bravery too—as long as I stayed very still. The little gray, though… her fear only deepened.

Part of that was my fault. When I examined her, I found her poor bum swollen and leaking. Instead of letting her warm up to me, I had to swoop in with medications, sub-q fluids, and worst of all… a bath.

Things got worse before they got better.

The next day, her brother needed meds. Then even the calico stopped eating and gaining weight. And in true calico fashion, she had opinions about treatment—running from the fragile trust we’d been building to glare at me from across the room, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth.

It took time. Patience. Rebuilding trust, piece by piece. The calico came around first, curling up under my chin one night and establishing what quickly became her nightly ritual. Surprisingly, the gray followed next—taking her cues from her sister and cautiously joining in for cuddles. The orange remains the most independent, but when he chooses affection, he means it—offering up deep, rumbling purrs like a reward.

I named them in honor of all the waiting it took to get them here:

Rain Check — the calico, worth the wait.

Snooze Button — the orange, always bargaining for just a little more time.

Gridlock — the gray, who froze until she felt safe enough to move forward.

We’ve been together for two weeks now, and we’re finally done with all medications.

Rain Check has decided this is worth celebrating—loudly. She screams for attention whenever I enter the room, or even when I’m just close enough to be heard. The others are just as happy to see me, though much less vocal about it.

Rain Check is also a climber. She’s made it her mission to scale me at every opportunity—perching on my shoulders, or occasionally my head. She keeps me company while I work, curling into my arms or casually waltzing across my keyboard like she has important emails to send.

Just tonight, Gridlock followed her up for the first time.

Gridlock, however, is less interested in me and my work than she is in the concept of new territory. Now that she’s feeling better, she has fully embraced her role as leader of Zoomie Land—charging into every new space like she’s been waiting her whole life for it.

Snooze Button is… a unique dude.

He enjoys playing with his sisters, but when they’re busy, he has chosen a different companion: my stool. A sturdy wooden stool with horizontal bars between the legs. I’m never fast enough to catch him in the act, but I’ve found him multiple times hanging upside down underneath it, fully committed to whatever game he thinks he’s playing.

They’ve also developed a deep fascination with sleeping on my feet.

Snooze Button is currently snoozing on my toes. I can’t get a picture—or even see him—without disturbing him. The window is open, the night air is just cold enough to require a blanket, and he’s tucked himself into the dark like he belongs there.

I only know it’s him because the girls are settled in my lap. I’ve had to rescue them more than once from slowly sliding off, as they now trust me so completely that they’ve stopped taking any responsibility for their own safety.

They’re about 75% of the way to their surgery weight and gaining steadily… which means they’ll soon be ready to go cause delays in someone else’s home.

I can’t make it to work right now, I have a cat in my lap.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the party, I had a cat in my lap.

I really wanted to be there, but I had a cat in my lap.

I’ve had to pee for 40 minutes… but I have a cat in my lap.

I'm sure their future family will not be bothered by these delays one bit!

Update 6/22/26

Procrastination is the name of the game.

Gridlock took her sweet time gaining weight, but she eventually hit 2 lbs and was scheduled for surgery. Not long after, though, I noticed Rain Check was looking a little… off. Lethargic, quieter than usual—and then came a pretty significant drop in weight.

Update 7/10/26

So… I got interrupted. Then I went on vacation. Then I needed a week to catch up on data entry and clinic prep when I got back.

Which means these kittens have already been adopted 😅

BUT—I go back and read these blogs sometimes to remember past litters, and this crew absolutely deserves their story told. So I’m finishing it. (Also, like Gridlock, I am clearly a procrastinator… and this sounds way better than cleaning my craft room right now.)

Over the next 24 hours, all three kittens had significant weight loss… along with, well… some very unpleasant liquid situations.

They had already graduated out of quarantine, so my new kitten Mongo had been hanging out with them. He showed some mild symptoms, but thankfully nothing as severe—likely helped by having had more vaccinations already.

This led to nearly two weeks of coordinating with my mentor—figuring out treatments, doing round-the-clock care, endless cleaning, and sectioning off parts of the room so they wouldn’t contaminate anything harder to sanitize..  The set up was a disaster visually and drove me nuts- but it kept the things I needed to grab close enough to get quickly while giving me some space to give meds, take weights, syringe feed, wipe butts, and provide the best care I could.

My best guess is that I brought something into the room myself (though they also could have picked something up during surgery, which was earlier that week).  Before these kittens got sick, I had been helping treat several other sick kittens in the rescue that same week.. I was careful about washing my hands… but I wasn’t always changing my clothes.

One of those kittens later tested positive for panleuk..  So I had a very nerve-wracking half day (the test doesn't actually take that long, but I had just cleaned up their messes when my mentor suggested I test, so I had to wait until someone was ready to give me a test sample again!) where I was convinced I had exposed everyone—and that my whole household was about to get sick.

Thankfully, their test came back negative.  Lesson learned.  Since then, I’ve been much more careful—using an apron or protective gown, changing clothes between groups, and if kittens are especially sick, I’ll even do fluids and meds out in the garage.  Not the easiest lesson to learn… but definitely one that stuck..

Monitoring weights in kittens is a critical part of neonatal care.  We require fosters to weigh kittens daily.  While they were sick, I tried to get a weight at every meal.  I was taking copious notes and my scribbling was often hard to read so I created this google sheet so my mentor could easily track all the information I had.  A lot of it probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me or my mentor- but it's an example of the quality care given to kittens by IBR fosters and the over-worked and definitely underpaid mentors guiding us.

Things went fairly smoothly that first week—mostly because the kittens felt terrible and didn’t have the energy to cause problems.

But as they started to feel better… They developed opinions about confinement.

Suddenly, every cleaning session turned into a multi-hour event (thank goodness for summer vacation), because I was constantly being interrupted by kittens attempting daring escapes over the barrier—trying to leave evidence of their still-leaky condition across anything they could reach.

It was less “contained recovery space” and more popcorn in a hot pan—every time I turned my back, another kitten was launching upward.

One evening, when Seth was home, I recruited him to help by standing guard on the other side of the barrier and gently redirecting the escape artists. With help? Cleaning only took about 30 minutes and the kittens still managed to coordinate 2 successful jailbreaks.  Without help? 3–4 hours of chaos, containment, and cleaning.

At that point, Seth admitted he finally understood why I was so exhausted after doing this solo every day.

During this period, my mentor encouraged me to switch to pellet litter. In her defense, it does have advantages—supposedly easier to monitor stool consistency, easier cleanup, and it’s what our adoption team prefers (and uses at Petsmart) since it doesn’t scatter like clumping litter.

I tried.  I hated it.  First problem: everything was still very… liquid. The walnut pellets basically dissolved, making it impossible to tell what was what. So we switched to paper pellets.

By then, things were starting to firm up—but the kittens hated the new litter just as much as I did. Their response?

They did not stop going.  They just… stopped going in the box.  One morning, I woke up to something I truly cannot describe in polite company. (The HORRORS!.)  That was the end of the pellet experiment.  I dumped it all and poured clumping litter back into the box—and Rain Check climbed in immediately, clearly relieved to finally… relieve herself. Before I could even scoop, Gridlock jumped in, followed closely by Snooze Button. Each one took turns: do a little business, run off for zoomies, then come back to finish like they were celebrating.

Mongo, of course, did not care at all—so I’m pretty sure he was the only one who had been using the pellets the entire time.

After switching back to clumping litter?  Zero accidents.  We were finally back on track, with just a few days of meds left.

Unfortunately, all of this delayed their move to Petsmart by a week. Given their names, I should have guessed nothing would happen on schedule.  Normally not a big deal—but this time, I was about to leave for Hawaii.

It’s also peak kitten season—50+ kittens ready for adoption, limited space at Petsmart, and priority goes to the biggest/oldest kittens. Mine were on the "pending-if-room" list… but I wouldn’t be there.  Luckily, I found a respite foster—who also happens to be our Petsmart adoption lead. I sent the kittens off with their kennel cards, adoption gift bags…

…and a bag of clumping litter.  Along with a very large sign to discourage them from switching them back to pellets!  We got very few pictures during this time because they were not photo-glamourous and locked up behind a wall of medical and cleaning supplies- but once I took down the barrier, their happiness to be free was interrupted by my audacity to take out their mortal enemy... Vacuum!!  They hid in a corner until the beast was vanquished. 

Dropping kittens off at Petsmart is always a mix of blessing and heartbreak.

On one hand, I love having one last chance to say goodbye. Sometimes there are already eager adopters waiting to meet them, and it’s so special to be there—to share their personalities, answer questions, and help make that connection. Those are often the adopters who stay in touch, who send updates, who let you watch your babies grow.

On the other hand… it’s really hard not to cry (which, for the record, is not a great look in public).  Because sometimes, you just don’t hear anything again.

Leaving them with a respite foster added another layer of anxiety. I didn’t even know if they’d make it to Petsmart while I was gone or come back home to me. But at that point, there wasn’t much I could do except trust the process.

Thanks to the overwhelming number of kittens this season, the team organized a special Friday adoption night—and cleared out enough space that my babies made it to Petsmart while I was in Hawaii.  The girls were adopted together (YAY!!)… but I haven’t heard from their adopter (sob).

Snooze Button, however, wasted no time. His new mom reached out almost immediately to say he was a perfect match for their home—no hesitation, no adjustment period, just instantly where he belonged. And she sent the cutest picture to prove it.

So in the end… all good things come to those who wait.

And maybe updates on the girls are just a little… delayed.